


Time for the poor child to have some fun

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: North Face - Mary Renault
Genre: Community: ladiesbingo, F/F, Ficlet, Gen, Grief, Missing Scene, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 17:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9501911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: Lettice is finding life at Weir View dispiriting.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the ladiesbingo prompt 'Heatwave'.

Mother, grasping cautiously but generously at the facts, had declared that _it was time for the poor child to have some fun_. And so they had ended up here.

What had possessed Mother to think that fun of any sort might be lurking at Weir View, Lettice couldn't imagine. The only fun that she had encountered thus far had been trapped between the covers of _No Orchids for Miss Blandish_ , and that wasn't, strictly speaking, fun at all. _Excitement_ , perhaps, though even that was pushing it. Lettice had picked it up to see what all the fuss was about. She had found out, decided that she didn't think much of it, and wondered, idly, whether she could do better.

It would have been all right had Joanie been there; but then Lettice could say that of a lot of things. Joanie would have given those two cats something else to think about. (Each other, perhaps.) Joanie would have found the pompous schoolmaster as funny as Lettice did, and would have found some brilliant method of discomfiting him. (Lettice settled for terrifying him, which was far easier than it should have been, and not nearly as satisfying.) Joanie would have put their landlady at her ease and done something amazing with the rations. Joanie would have stopped Mother worrying.

Joanie would have made everything better.

But Joanie was gone, and nothing would be better again.

Lettice had had her fun; perhaps, she thought bleakly, all the fun that had been allotted to her. Was this going to be the rest of her life, traipsing around a succession of increasingly excruciating seaside resorts (surely they couldn't get much worse than this, though), trying to recapture some sense of being alive that she vaguely remembered having felt once, and waiting for the next disaster?

Then she shook herself. It was something about this place: so inward-looking, the tide of life streaming out past them all, into the open ocean. The heat sapped the nerves and the will.

She fished _No Orchids for Miss Blandish_ out from between the sofa cushions, wondering without much interest who had moved her marker. Then she wandered out onto the lawn. Her mother was dozing in a deckchair. Poor Mother, Lettice thought; she looks as bored as I feel. Lettice stooped to rescue a magazine that had blown off her lap; the motion roused her and she sat up, blinking.

'Lettice, darling.' It was neither a question nor a reproof; it was barely even a greeting. Nevertheless, there was some hint of inquiry in it, which made Lettice feel obscurely as if she had been shirking.

Her mother, she thought, was not sitting on the beach watching the tide pass her; she was gamely bobbing along in the middle of it. And, after all, why should they all be miserable? 'Mother,' she said, 'might we move on?'

An expression of mild surprise. 'Of course, darling. Where did you want to go?'

'I think,' Lettice said, 'I should like to go back to London.'

It was as easy as that.


End file.
